September 8th – # 1,000!

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Daughter Caelyn can already point out gulls (here), Chickadees and can recognize chickadee calls.

It’s always been interesting to me how some really neat things arise from simple and unexpected beginnings. In 2006 Jeff MacLeod was a Master’s student at McMaster (in psychology) but in his spare time he came out to the banding lab to indulge his passion for birds. (Jeff subsequently went on to obtain a banding sub-permit which he used to do a research project in Nova Scotia on the singing of Hermit Thrushes. He’s currently working on a PhD in clinical psychology.) One day he sauntered into the lab (he was pretty good at arriving just after the nets were opened) and casually announced that he had been fooling around on his computer the night before and just out of curiousity had created a blog for the banding lab if I wanted to use it. Now at that time (I’m such a Luddite!) I didn’t know what a blog was but once he explained it to me I saw that it had great potential to tell people about Ruthven, about birds, and about what goes on here. Fortunately, then and now, Jeff always made himself available to help me work out how to post things, how to put up pictures, how to update things – whenever I needed something out of the (very) ordinary done or something technical, Jeff was right on it: great tech support!! Since that time, words just flowed….and then words and pictures…. And then the other day I just happened to notice that we were at our 995th post. Amazing!

So, this is the momentous (to me anyway) 1,000th post! I hope you all out there in cyberland have enjoyed going through them as much as I have enjoyed posting them. But I’ll always remember Jeff’s casual announcement:”by the way, last night I was fooling around on my computer and created a blog….you might be interested in checking it out.”

 

In his youth, Jeff was an ardent participant in Ruthven's banding program - he holds a sub-permit.

Jeff the PhD student in clinical psychology.

 
Is it just me or does Jeff look thinner in the picture on the left?
 
 

Jeff with daughter Caelyn.

 

 

Paternity has been good for Jeff…..no great!

 

 

 

Rick 

Today’s Results:

The weather was awful this morning but I went out to Ruthven for a few hours in the hopes that the weather would clear…no luck there. In addition to the rain there were some wicked winds for a bit. Anyway, I got a census in before heading out. Nothing too crazy but getting a late Yellow Warbler was nice.
 
I’m off to the Dominican tomorrow, and get back on the 16th. I will probably have sporadic email access, so if I’m slow responding to emails that’s why!
 
Have a good week, I think there are going to be lots of birds moving with this weather change!
  
Matt

 

 

3 thoughts on “September 8th – # 1,000!”

  1. Congratulations are definitely in order to Rick and his merry band of volunteers.
    Jeff opened up a whole new world for Ruthven by creating this blog.

    Betsy

  2. Congrats to all the people who have contributed to the blog. Certainly Rick has done the majority of the writing! I’m happy that I was a part of it.

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